Putin cancels Turkey visit The Russian president had scheduled a visit to Turkey for next Sunday. He cancelled it after Turkish fighters forced a Syrian civilian plane en route from Moscow to land in Ankara Wednesday night. Moscow has demanded clarifications from Ankara, reporting that 17 Russians were aboard the Syrian aircraft bound for Damascus. The Syrian government has accused Turkey of “air piracy.”

Oil prices rose Thursday as growing tensions between Turkey and Syria caused worries about the reliability of Middle East crude supplies.

Benchmark oil for November delivery was up 48 cents to $91.73 per barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.14 to finish at $91.25 per barrel on the Nymex on Wednesday after some mixed economic signals.

Brent crude, used to price international varieties of oil, rose 86 cents to $115.19 on the ICE Futures Exchange in London.

Turkish jets on Wednesday forced a Syrian passenger plane to land at Ankara airport on suspicion that it might be carrying weapons or other military equipment to support the regime of President Bashar Assad in its civil war against Syrian rebels.

A cameraman working for pro-government television station al-Ikhbariya was shot dead in a city in eastern Syria on Wednesday while covering the ongoing civil war, making him the 25th journalist to be killed in the country so far this year.

Cameraman Mohammad al-Ashram was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor while covering the conflict, according to al-Ikhbariya TV director Imad Sara. The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) described the attackers as “terrorists”, a term the government also uses to refer to rebels fighting to overthrow the government of President al-Assad.

Powerful Syrian Islamist brigades, frustrated at the growing divisions among rebels, have joined forces in what they say is a "liberation front" to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

Mistrust and miscommunication have been a feature of the rebel campaign against Assad. Differences over leadership, tactics and sources of funding have widened the rifts between largely autonomous brigades scattered across Syria.

After more than a month of secret meetings, leaders of Islamist brigades - including the Farooq Brigade that operates mainly in Homs province and the heavyweight Sukour al-Sham brigade of Idlib - formed the "Front to Liberate Syria".

The agreement is not the first which seeks to bring together disparate fighting groups and its Islamist emphasis has already alienated some other fighters.

The growing role of the Islamist fighters and their battlefield prowess has also caused concern among Western powers as they weigh up how best to support the opposition forces arrayed against Assad.

Russia will not renew a decades-old agreement with Washington on dismantling nuclear and chemical weapons when it expires next year, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

The death of the 1991 agreement, which had been renewed twice, is the latest in a series of hitches in relations between the United States and Russia and casts doubt on the future of the much-vaunted “reset” in relations between the Cold War-era foes.

Bomb explosion hits security area of Damascus-activistsA large bomb exploded in an area housing security and army compounds west of Umayyad Square in central Damascus on Thursday, opposition activists said.

Islamist groups Ahfad al-Rasoul and Ansar al-Islam said in a joint statement they planted bombs in a compound belonging to State Security in the area.

Syrian state television said a "terrorist explosion" had injured two people. Witnesses said soldiers in full combat gear were deployed in the area and all roads leading to Umayyad Square were cut.

Ansar al-Islam claimed responsibility for a bomb attack last month on the army's Chief of Staff headquarters in Umayyad Square, which started a large fire in the building.

Organisers of a conference aimed at uniting the divided Syrian opposition said on Thursday it had been postponed until they can agree on fair representation of disparate groups.

The conference, which had been scheduled for Qatar from Oct. 15 to 17, was intended to reorganise the Syrian National Council, the main opposition bloc, and inject new blood into the organisation, which has struggled to win credibility as a democratic alternative to President Bashar al-Assad.

Wider representation could dilute the power of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has had de facto control over the Council since it was formed in Turkey in August last year, and assuage Western demands for Assad's foes to unite.

Hezbollah denies sending fighters into SyriaHezbollah denied on Thursday sending fighters into Syria to help its ally President Bashar al-Assad to quell the rebellion there.

"We did not fight alongside the regime until now. The regime did not ask us to do so and also who says that doing so is in Lebanon's interest?" Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the group's chief, said.

Hezbollah's opponents have accused it of sending fighters into Syria. Last month, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Nasrallah for helping Assad crush anti-government protests, as well as two other members for the group's "terrorist activities" in general.

The families of 17 Russian passengers on a Damascus-bound plane from Moscow got a midnight shock upon learning that Turkish jets had intercepted the flight. For those asking why, the answer begins in Syria, and ripples throughout the world.

Damascus called it an act of piracy. Ankara said it was exercising its rights. Moscow accused the Turkish government of endangering the lives of Russian nationals. That Turkish military jets would intercept a passenger plane en route from Moscow to Damascus shows just how much the 18-month conflict to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad has rippled throughout the region and the world.

Turkey’s increased belligerence, which began with a disproportionate retaliatory shelling campaign against Syria last week and culminated in the interception of the Syrian passenger plane under the pretext that it was carrying Russian military equipment, has sparked a diplomatic row for which Ankara initially had few answers.

On Thursday Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the plane was carrying munitions for the Syrian Defense Ministry.

Russia's arms export agency said that it had no cargo on the flight, while military analysts argue it is unlikely Moscow would use a civilian airliner to send military cargo to Syria. What emboldened Turkey to force the jet to land is another matter.

“Turkey isn’t doing it without an 'okay' from Washington. And it is frightening actually how aggressively they’re playing at this point, especially a couple of weeks before the [American] election,” Anti-war activist and journalist Don Debar told RT.

What was Turkey's thinking behind plane interception?Turkey's decision to force a Syrian airliner to land appears either to be the result of poor intelligence or of a deliberate strategy to undermine Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.

Either way it marked a further intervention in the civil war.

The reason given for taking the Syrian Airbus under F-16 escort to Ankara was that it was carrying weapons. It was flying from Moscow to Damascus, and the Syrian government denounced the move as "piracy".

There were no weapons, no systems or components of military equipment on Syria-bound plane,and there could never be

Russia’s state-run arms exporter Rosoboronexport said that it had no cargo on the flight.

Russian airport representatives also said that customs and security services did not find anything suspicious in the cargo before the 35-passenger plane was cleared for takeoff. All the relevant inspection documents were passed over to officials for investigation, the Vnukovo Airport press service said.

Military analysts and industry insiders say it is unlikely that Moscow would use a civilian aircraft to send military cargo to Syria.

“Even if it really were necessary to send any military equipment or arms supplies, it would have been done as required by law, not illegally, using a civilian jet,” a top official in Russian’s military export industry told Interfax. “There were no weapons, no systems or components of military equipment on board, and there could never be.”

A powerful blast targeting the military justice building in Damascus has injured two people.

The blast, described as “terrorist attack” by Syrian state television, happened in front of the Syrian military justice building, which is close to the Ministry of Higher Education, in the western Damascus Mazzeh district on Thursday evening.

Earlier in the day, "armed terrorists" opened fire on a bus transporting Syrian workers near the Syrian border with Lebanon, killing eight people.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011.

Damascus says outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorists are the driving factors behind the unrest and deadly violence, but the opposition and the West accuse security forces of being behind the killings.

Tensions have been running high between Syria and Turkey, with Damascus accusing Turkey along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar of backing deadly insurgency that has claimed the lives of many Syrians, including security and Army personnel.

Turkey deploys tanks near Syrian border amid escalating tensionsTurkey has deployed 250 tanks along its southern border with Syria amid rising tensions with the Damascus government over the past few days.

The Turkish parliament has extended the government’s mandate to order military strikes against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants holed up in northern Iraq for another year.

The motion, renewed on Thursday, authorizes the Turkish government to send members of the Turkish Armed Forces, with the aim of doing away with the threat of terrorism and attacks, in cross-border operations in Iraq's northern region where the PKK has built its nest.

BRUSSELS, Oct 11 (Reuters) - The EU will toughen up its sanctions on Syria's arms industry and bar more of its officials from travelling to Europe in order to crimp President Bashar al-Assad's access to cash, diplomats said on Thursday.

They said European Union (EU) governments had reached a preliminary agreement on the measures intended to choke off the money Assad needs to fund his military in its more than 18-month bid to quash a popular rebellion against his government.

The new sanctions will be formally approved at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday and will target Syrian airlines, its arms industry and government, they said.

The measures come as the West struggles to devise a solution to end the violence in Syria, or formulate sanctions that could have a meaningful impact on the Syrian government and force it to stop violence against rebels. An estimated 30,000 people have died in more than 18 months of fighting.

Turkey redirected the European missile defense system in the Kurecik base near the city of Malatya to Syria to monitor the situation in the country, the Sabah newspaper reported.

This will allow Turkey to control offensive and defensive actions of the Syrian government troops and missile launches. According to the newspaper, Turkey took such a decision with the consent of NATO after shells from Syrian territory killed five Turkish citizens on Oct.3.

Turkey is proceeding to deliver military equipment to the border with Syria after the Turkish parliament made a decision enabling trans-boundary operations against Syria. Ankara states that such measures are taken to prevent further provocations of Syria, and start of an armed conflict is out of the question.

The decision to deploy elements of the European missile defense shield in Turkey was made at the NATO summit in Lisbon in 2010, and Turkey initially supported the initiative.

A look at Turkey’s military capabilityTurkey has sent reinforcements to its border with Syria. It has warned of stronger retaliation if Syrian shells continue to land on Turkish soil but made it clear it does not seek war.

Here is an overview of the Turkish armed forces:

* TURKEY’S ARMED FORCES:

– Turkey has the second largest standing force in NATO after the United States.

- The country has more than 338 combat-capable aircraft, as well as transport planes and gunship helicopters. There are 54 U.S. Northrop F-5A/B Freedom fighter aircraft and 284 ground attack aircraft including 70 F-4E Phantoms and F-16C/Ds with more to be delivered by the end of 2012.

- 40 transport helicopters and more than 178 SAM missiles for air defence

* PARAMILITARY: There is a 100,000-strong national guard with 50,000 reserves, its own vehicles and equipment. Turkey’s Coast Guard force has 3,250 personnel including 1,400 conscripts and 1,050 from the Navy. The coast guard has 98 patrol and coastal boats.